The former, first and only president from Arkansas was in Little Rock last weekend. With him was the former First Lady (of Arkansas and the nation), U.S. Senator from New York and Secretary of State — and unsuccessful Democratic nominee for president last year. Perhaps you heard of it; maybe you were there, at the namesake library, for the 25th anniversary observance of Bill Clinton’s election.

“Observance,” by the accounts of those present, seems a bit solemn. The Clintons sat for a dialogue with their campaign strategist, James Carville, and if the discussion involved some serious issues, foreign and domestic, the colloquy often was sentimental, romantic in its reminiscence.

There was plenty of fun to be had for the Clintons and their alumni. From out of town came some leading figures from the White House years to mingle with the Arkansas team at a barbecue. There were some private afterparties; smaller, more intimate gatherings.

All fine and well. They were entitled to it. They (well, he) ran and won. She ran (twice) and came up short (the second time in the Electoral College; she won the popular vote). The good fight, as it were.

The reunion festivities were still underway when an e-mail arrived in my “In” box from a longtime Clinton ally who had worked in nearby states as one of Hillary Clinton’s Arkansas Travelers. “[C]ouldn’t bring myself to go to either last night’s Travelers gathering or today’s lectures at Statehouse Convention Center,” he wrote.

Despite his journeys on her behalf in 2016, “I have found myself developing a real resentment toward both (Clintons) that I have struggled to understand. Probably just disappointment — so much intelligence, so much talent, so much potential. Yet fell short in so many ways.”

“Have been stewing over this for a year,” he added.

In my reply, I mentioned the face I saw in last year’s surprise outcome: Monroe Schwarzlose. Had Hillary forgotten that obscure turkey farmer who scored a third of the primary vote against freshman Governor Bill Clinton in 1980, a warning that the incumbent was in serious trouble with Arkansas’s middle- and low-income electorate, the traditional Democratic base?

Not until after Donald Trump was pronounced President-elect did it emerge that her husband, who would never forget Schwarzlose, had been warning his wife’s campaign commanders (and presumably the candidate) that Mr. Trump’s appeal to “angry white males” was resonating, that his populist rhetoric was hitting its target.

When the dust from election night began to settle insiders acknowledged that Big Dog’s warnings were dismissed by Hillary’s whiz kids and their ultra-sophisticated polling metrics. Of course none of them, to borrow from the playbook of the late, legendary Speaker Sam Rayburn, had ever run for sheriff.

Thus Hillary’s full-throated demand, in every speech at every stop, for full rights for LGBT Americans. An admirable goal, but gays and lesbians, an already committed Clinton constituency, were vastly outnumbered by out-of-work miners, mechanics and manufacturing workers, a majority of whom had an entirely different set of grievances.

My cyber-correspondent responded to my response:

“The ‘angry white men’ I hear at the coffee shop every morning feel excluded by and are resentful of the Democrats’ seeming emphasis on identity politics. Two, Hillary’s ‘whiz kids’ did a terrible job,” in his experience, not only at overall November strategy, but at the ground game underlying it.

“Why did we waste days on phone banks using call lists that were totally worthless? Many times I got ‘No longer a working number’ on nine out of 10 calls. On many occasions I would ask to speak to the person identified on a list, frequently a Hispanic name, to be told there was no one by that name …”

If the tactics of the ’16 effort were inadequate, he continued, the strategy in the closing days bordered on the incomprehensible. He decried a squandering of precious resources in kamikaze missions in politically improbable, even unwinnable states — a fatal overconfidence in the campaign’s capacity to energize turnout in behalf of “perceived close Senate contests.”

Overconfidence: In the closing minutes of the Clintons-Carville chat, the successes of the 90s dispensed with, the moderator mentioned “the elephant in the room” — the failure of the ’16 undertaking. One can’t but suspect that many of the audience instantly, internally, cringed; the second elephant in the room was the dalliance that led to the former president’s impeachment, memories of those horrid days inconveniently revived by the surge in sexual harassment scandals involving prominent men.

Clinton not only survived but prospered, financially and in public esteem. So, too, Mrs. Clinton, though her reach twice exceeded her grasp. Each will survive as well the uncomfortable reappraisals already underway, some of them by their supporters, some of them weary. Such as my e-mail correspondent, who wondered: “Who is taking the lead in recruiting new young candidates vs. patting themselves on the back?